The travel plans are as follows:

Leaving Monday morning on the 17th at 6:00 AM from Portland. United Airways flight 3142 to DC.

Leaving DC at 10:25 AM United Airways flight 1259 to Southwest Florida international

We are staying in Ft. Myers, FL

Returning on Friday the 21st.

Leaving Southwest Florida international at 3:00 PM United Airways flight 1890 to Charlotte, NC.

Leaving Charlotte at 6:20 PM United Airways flight 1118 to Portland Arriving at 8:34 PM

When we get home I will be sure to post tons of pics. See you all at the wedding.

let me know what you think.

After drilling both new holes in the studs horizontally and the new holes to the basement I ran enough wire to reach the breaker box and stapled the wire in the basement to the beams. I then nailed in the new boxes for the outlets in the room and ran wire from each box to the next.

After the wires were run to the boxes I was able to connect the outlets, many people may be cautious when it comes to wiring outlets but as long as you follow some basic guides and always work with the power off it is not that difficult. After you strip the wires you see three, black, white, and bare or copper. The black goes on the brass screw on the outlet which also looks gold. the top or bottom does not matter. Next the white goes on the silver screw, again top or bottom does not matter. So, there will be two black wires (one wire comes from the power and the other goes to the next outlet) and two white wires connecting to two brass and two silver screws.

There is one last screw the green or ground, this is where the bare or copper wire goes. This one is a little more tricky because there is only one ground screw on the outlet and both copper wires have to connect to it. To get around this what you have to do is cut a small piece of wire about three inches long and connect it to the green screw on the outlet, next you need to get a wire nut and connect all three bare wires together (one from the power one going to the next outlet and the short one connecting to the screw on the outlet).

All the outlets on the circuit will be done this way except for the last one. The last outlet in the room only has one wire coming into the box from the power, but this does not change anything to do with the wiring except for the copper because there is only one and not three so it can be connected directly to the green screw.

After connecting the wires and screwing them in securely I had to push them into the box, forcing the excess wire into the box. For some of the boxes it is not easy, especially I had left too much excess but I was thinking its better to have some extra then short myself and have to re-run a long wire.

When I connected the wire in the breaker box I already had a free breaker and made sure it was off. I then connected the black into the breaker switch and screwed it in tightly. Next I connected the white and copper wires to there own connection on the box. I am intentionally leaving this vague because I had to talk to an electrician on where to connect them, it depends on how the box is and I don’t want anyone to use this as an exact guide and go screw something up.

So this is the basic setup for my bedroom outlets and the template for the rest of the house’s outlets with some variations. And it mostly depends on how you want your breakers setup, for example what you want on what breaker. I am trying to isolate sections of the house to there own breaker because right now one breaker shuts off the overhead light in the bedroom, the kitchen light, fridge, porch light, and half of the living room outlets. I intend to correct this and make it more logical in terms of location and load on the breaker.

I hope this was at the very least interesting to read, any feedback is always appreciated.

On another topic the house is coming along. We had a great Thanksgiving at our house, everything went perfectly and everyone brought just the right thing including tons of deserts which we are still eating.

For all the pics check out this link.

Again back to the house, we have put up molding in the bedroom around the windows. We still have to put up the ceiling molding, floor molding, baseboard enclosure, and refinish the floors. The floors are going to wait until we do the kitchen so we can do all the floors at once because they are all laminate with hard wood underneath.

There are also many other projects that are upcoming, some of which include re-sheet rocking the hallway, filling cracks in the basement concreet, replacing more windows, and redoing the kitchen. I will try to keep everyone updated as we start these.

I have tomorrow off from work I will try to post some of the older projects I did possibly starting with the electrical in the bedroom. We are also getting our Christmas tree tomorrow also.

We are also planing Thanksgiving this week so we are busy with that. Having around 15 people coming to our house and its going to be hectic to say the least. I am going to start planing some future posts here about some of the other projects we have done and try to explain them with pictures in detail. I had envisioned this blog to be a journal of renovations but I have been neglecting that thus far. I will try to do better as things slowly settle down.

Lets start with the bedroom, we finished demolishing the walls, got insulation up and pretty much finished the Sheetrock. I say pretty much because we are waiting on a few pieces because one windows leaks a little so after we get our windows in we will fix the opening and put up the 2 last pieces. We have the taping done and most of the sanding, I think there is one more coat on the walls and we will be done. I have some pics of the progress.

I also did the electrical outlets for the bedroom and they all worked the first time

This has been the fun part, now for the other side of owning a home. Within the first few days of living here our shower started draining slowly and after a few days it did not drain at all. After flushing the toilet one day it backed up in the tub. Our first thoughts were that the pipe going to the road was broken or had issues with roots from the tree out front. As it turned out it was actually a pipe inside, the main sewer pipe and was fixed but not after costing $300.00

The second major problem we have had is the other day we decided to try and change out our shower fixtures in the bathroom downstairs because of low water pressure. We had trouble unscrewing some of the pipes so we left it for another day and decided to use the upstairs shower instead for a bit. Well after a few minutes in the shower Heather comes running upstairs telling me to shut the water off. There was water raining down from our kitchen light. So in just a towel I ran downstairs to turn off the breaker to the kitchen and water to the upstairs. I may have left out that the water was off going upstairs because we still had a small drip in the pipe in the basement. The plumber came the next night and seemed to have fixed it for now, he still has a few loose ends to fix before the whole project is done but we are in pretty good shape right now. I also have another plumber coming to finish changing out the fixtures in the downstairs bathroom tonight.

Well I know I just put alot of info in this one long post but I had to get it out of my head before it all became a blur. There is still more I need to post about like my basement light project but I will save that for next post and try to keep up with updating. Hopefully it wont get too crazy around here.

Its about bed time, just wanted to get a quick update and let everyone know I haven’t given up on this yet

The yellow color is horsehair plaster I believe and behind it was plaster with wooden slats, not sure of the official term. Along with getting that off, which was fairly easy, we tried to save the molding. It was fairly easy except for around the closet because the closet was added after everything was put up. So the molding and paneling both extended into the closet behind the studs which means it had to be broken off to be removed.

I started tearing up the floor and got a nice little supprise, lets see if you see it too.

If you don’t see it take another look, under the crap floor is hardwood flooring Its going to be a pain to get it all up but it should be worth the effort when I do it. The flooring is the same in the kitchen so cross your fingers that we have hardwood in the kitchen and dining room also.

OK, so back to the walls. I started to tear down the walls in preparation for insulation and eventually sheet rock.

Still have the wall on the left to do but was a pretty productive day in all. I will be posting more pics of what my vacation entails. We are planning on trying to finish up the painting tomorrow. We have our painter guy who lives down the road come and spray on the second coat of paint. We will still have to go behind him and paint close to the windows where the sprayer cant reach but he said he should be able to spray the whole house in 1 day. We also have some trim work to do around the windows.

It will be a very busy day tomorrow, I also want to work more on the bedroom tomorrow night after painting but we will see how that goes.

Today I will be painting some more of the wall facing the neighbors and hopefully I can get some more trim work done around some of the windows. Jamie and John may be coming to the house today and I hope he can deal better with heights then I can and he could do the second story trim.

On another note, we have running water now as well as a flushing toilet The boiler was delivered Tuesday and is already sitting in place and soon to be up and running. The plumber is coming again today and I will probably have him work on the baseboard in the living room so we we can know that room is done and able to move stuff into and then have him just work on hot water. After that its just a matter of a shower working before we can really move in. I will most likely start moving some stuff in as early as tomorrow after work.

Before the Fun started

After

We were able to get this wall done except for the trim around the windows.

Here are a few more pics of work we did today.

Back of the Living room

Side facing neighbors

I will post again with more more updates, but tonight I have to head to bed. Its been a long day.